Written by James Fohl

Following the success of Spider-man 2 and X2, the sequel to the original X-Men movie, Marvel Comics again are believed
to be making money once again as they are taking yet another popular comic book franchise and taking it into movie land.
This time, the comic is the Fantastic Four, a comic strip that was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby back in the early
1960's (1961).

The Fantastic Four is a group of four individuals that gained their powers back in the 1961 by being exposed to cosmic
rays, however this is due to change for the upcoming movie. The group consists of the team leader, Mr. Fantastic, The
Invisible Woman, The Torch, and The Thing. Believe me when I say that while they do not have the most creative names
ever, neither do their enemies.

Each member of the Fantastic Four has a specific special power. Mr. Fantastic has the ability to stretch. The Invisible
Woman has the power.. well to be invisible, and can also build invisible force fields. The Torch has the ability to set
himself upon fire, while The Thing is a guy that looks like he's made out of dirt, and thus has superhuman strength.


As mentioned previously, if you think the Fantastic Four group members have some very unoriginal names, then you will
most likely be very amused with the Fantastic Four's enemies. The main guy, Doctor Doom looks very evil and wears
a cast iron mask to prevent people from seeing the scars he had received on his face in a previous experiment that had
gone wrong. Other villains that the Fantastic Four have run into include the horrible Mole Man, the Dragonman, and
of course the Mad Thinker.

While the Fantastic Four brought a lot of attention back in the early sixties with their introduction, other attempts at
bringing them to the media in recent years have failed miserably. Eleven years ago, back in 1994, a live action Fantastic Four movie
was made under a budget of two million dollars. He turned out to be such a disaster that the movie was never released, and even
the creator of the comic books, Stan Lee was noted by saying that the movie was created with no intentions of actually being
released. Even today, eleven years later the movie has yet to have an official release.

With the new Fantastic Four movie coming out on July 8th, 2005 fans of Marvel's comic book franchise are eagerly waiting to see
how the movie plays out. A large variety of merchandise has been released for the movie, including video games and action figures,
but still no where near the amount of merchandise that was available for Spider-man 2. Hopefully the movie does well, and although
it is no Spider-man 3, bring in Marvel some extra cash. After all, not all comic book movies are smash hits. While Spider-man and
X-men bring in some cash, movies such as The Incredible Hulk and The Punisher have failed.